Friday, June 27, 2008

Dicey mail

Reader "Jim" wrote me with this tale of strange mail.

"More than 20 years ago, when I was a distribution clerk, I happened to catch something out of the corner of my eye in the crease along the bottom edge of an 'empty' spring loaded hamper. To my surprise, it was a regular-sized dice, with a stamp folded around the edges. It had "To" and "From" addresses written in the tiniest print on different sides of the dice. Even more amazing, was that the dice had made it all the way through its mail processing journey from Las Vegas origin to its Bellevue, WA, destination, arriving in a hamper containing regular sized parcels and larger SPRs."

Back in my day, before the DMM, I saw it all. The things that came through the mail! An ale mug, a quill pen, and a horseshoe. Some joker sent some knickerbockers to me directly and someone else sent some of Dr. Tom's mystical magical health potion with the cap loose and it spilled all over my hands. I must admit, my hands are much softer and more supple now.

5 comments:

Anonymous
said...

When I was a MPE working tour 2 at the Wichita Kansas P & DC I remember one morning I had just completed the maintenance route on our SPBS and turned it over to the operators. As I was gathering my tools, in the corner of my eye I saw something odd-colored coming down the chain. I turned and saw a flip-flop coming down on a carrier cell and fall into a chute. I wasn't the only one who noticed, and soon there were several folks over at the mail hamper it fell into, wanting to know if someone had actually mailed it. Sure enough, we turned it over and on the bottom it had been properly addressed and stamped (from Florida). There was also a short message, which read something to the effect of "Wish you were here."

This wasn't as much strange as nasty. One day there was a horrible odor coming from our parcel hamper. So horrible that we had to segregate the offending parcel on the dock. Since the customer only lived three blocks away, the carrier bungee-strapped it to his trunk lid and drove carefully to her home. No one was home so he simply left it on the porch. A few days later the customer sheepishly approached him and told him that the box contained okra that had been sent, parcel post, from North Carolina to Minnesota. And the customer's friend who had sent it told her "it had already started to go bad before I mailed it." Yuck!

The day a local newspaper had an article about Ship Shape mail some one [being funny] took it a little too serious. The person dropped some Poo in the mail and it made it's way to the Norfolk NE P&DF. We removed several soiled mail pieces and return them to the postmaster for proper handling notify & disposal. P U!

I am always amazed at the fact that you can send LIVE CHICKENS through the mail. Before I worked for the Postal Service, I can remember entering a Post Office once and heard PEEP PEEP PEEPing coming from the mail room!